Thoughts on the Apple Watch by an early Pebble backer

I was an early backer of the Pebble watch, hoping that it would allow me to be more in the moment by checking my phone less often.

That ended up not being the case. My Pebble was always buzzing, it was distracting — not just to me, but to the people around me — and I ended up checking it more often than my phone.

But I was not to be deterred — so I tried the Apple Watch!

After my first two weeks with it, here are some initial findings:

1. First and foremost, the haptic feedback is phenomenal. I cannot stress that enough. When I get a notification, it’s a light tap on my wrist — not buzzing or lighting up the screen — and I can decide whether or not to act on it. And most importantly — no one around me notices.
2. As a result, my primary use case for the watch has been notifications. I get a light tap, decide if I want to take a quick glance (or look later), and then make a decision: I can (often) reply directly from the watch, ignore the notification, or pull out my phone if necessary.
3. I am using my phone noticeably less (as proven by my extra battery life). But my aggregate usage of phone and watch is equal to that of just the phone before, if not slightly less.
4. My usage of the watch is more task-based than that of the phone. When I open a notification on my phone, I’ll often browse a few more apps, but this happens far less often on the watch.
5. I use Glances much more than I do apps. But data for apps and Glances are slow. As a result, I do everything I can to avoid having to open an app or Glance. For instance, I have chosen a watchface with the most information on it so the data loads asynchronously.
6. So far, apps have not been great. Much of this is due to the slow data and current limitations of WatchKit. But apps have also not been designed for the watch — they are trying to perform a subset of the functionality of a phone versus being designed for the platform itself (something I strongly support). Marco Arment has a great post on this. The only apps that have been solid in my opinion are the Apple-made ones and Uber — where all you can do is tap to call a car.
7. I’m surprised that I really like using the digital crown to scroll. It is very smooth and easy to use. And scrolling via the crown versus swiping allows me to see the content on the screen as I scroll.
8. I wish I could customize vibrations for app notifications separately for my watch versus my phone. The haptic feedback is so much better than my phone buzzing in my pocket — frankly it’s how notifications should work. Unfortunately, right now I can only mirror my phone’s vibration settings for 3rd party apps. I assume this will be changed in future versions of the watch.
9. Finally, the watch hasn’t become a necessity for me as my phone has. If I’m at home, I often won’t wear it; although if I’m out and have forgotten it, I do miss it. But I expect this to change as watch apps get better, as I felt similarly about my iPhone at first.

So what does this mean if you’re trying to develop an Apple Watch app?

1. Keep your app simple. This is true for phones, but even more true for watches. One primary use case per screen max!
2. Users are going to spend a maximum of 60 seconds with your app, and likely less than 30. So determine what the use case is for a 30 second session, and optimize for it. In Marco Arment’s post, he talks about optimizing his app for his users’ primary use case on the watch — the Now Playing screen — which is different from that on the phone.
3. Minimize the amount of data your app needs to load when opened. Given the current limitations of pairing with the phone, the apps that feel faster will have a distinct advantage in the eyes of users.
4. Glances are used much more than apps — however, the user is limited to 20 of them (and 20 are a bit cumbersome to navigate). Therefore, I would create a great Glance for your app and then do everything I could to get users to install it.
5. Notifications are more important than ever! They are the primary way I interact with my watch apps — this is much more similar to how Android phone users interact with their apps. Therefore, make sure you perfect your Notifications experience. Make the actions on the notifications useful, and also ensure the notifications themselves are relevant. When setting up an Apple Watch, a user reviews all her apps with fresh eyes and decides which apps she wants to receive notifications on her watch from. It is cumbersome to scroll through dozens of notifications on the watch, and I certainly don’t want my watch buzzing every 5 seconds. Therefore, review your app’s notifications and ensure they are relevant to the user — as they are the way she is going to interact with your watch app.

Overall, I’ve been much more pleased with the Apple Watch than my Pebble. And I think it’s a great opportunity for developers to take advantage of a new platform right from the ground floor.

I will be sure to post any new observations I have after a few more months with the Apple Watch. And I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences with smartwatches!

You can follow David Breger on Medium, LinkedIn, or Twitter @dbreger